The use of electronic communications, such as e-mail or text messages, to transmit audio, images, video, multimedia, etc., over networks such as the Internet, has grown dramatically in recent years. Furthermore, the purchase of media (e.g., music or videos) for delivery or distribution over the Internet has also become very popular. Due to increases in available bandwidth, lower cost memory and efficient file formats, the download of media files via the Internet is now practical. However downloading large media files, such as for high definition videos, can often be time consuming. An application running on a client device of a user will connect, e.g., via the Internet, with a server computer that stores available media files such as electronic messages for download or commercial media files for purchase or rent. In this way, the user of the client device can browse, preview, purchase and/or download available media files from the server, e.g., download a message (including video) from a friend of the user. These operations involving media files can be bandwidth-intensive and the user can experience delays if earlier file download requests have still not been completed. For example, the download of a media file to a client device may still be ongoing when the user of the client device decides to perform another operation (e.g., browse) that requires the download of file(s). In this situation, any file download request generated by the subsequent browse operation will probably have to wait for the complete execution of the earlier file download operation.